8bb’s recording of Reich’s Double Sextet made it onto Colbert last night. In the segment, “Who’s not honoring me now,” Colbert first took on the Pulitzers:
Hey, this sucker was made for me. Look at the inscription on the back: “For disinterested and meritorious service.” Nobody is more disinterested in public service. Hell, last year I robbed a bank just to get out of jury duty…
[Plays excerpt of Double Sextet] That is what I call head-banger music – in that it was clearly written by someone banging their head against a piano.
The Pulitzers … gave out fifteen awards to newspaper journalists, and there are only sixteen people still working at newspapers.
He then shredded the World Barista Championship (“…gripping…”) and the Emmys, who very unwisely removed the category in which Colbert had been nominated three times…
Comments 5
Oh my, this is SOOOOOOOOOOO bad…I had a hatchet job done on my company on PBS 20 years ago, after I had alerted everyone I knew to watch the show. My father the next day told me always to audit things first…unfunny Colbert makes no mention of 8th blackbird.
Yes, I know the Colbert persona, but it has become truly tiresome. My buddy Leon Botstein was on a year or two ago, for the work done at Bard in rehabilitating criminals, and oh my god!!!!!
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 1:21 PM ¶Luv, Jim
Clearly, Colbert does not know the difference between “disinterested” and “uninterested.” Or maybe he’s just willfully ignorant.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 4:59 PM ¶Chill out, folks! Stephen Colbert is a satirist, and, yes, he does know the difference between ‘disinterested’ and ‘uninterested’, but the point is that the folks he lampoons, such as O’Reilly, play fast and loose with such semantic niceties. Colbert plays a role on his show and has done it so well that a recent survey has shown that many self-identified conservatives think that he is on their side. (There’s another issue here — the Archie Bunker effect — in which entertainment crafted by liberals ends in actually strengthening the viewpoint that they are seeking to lampoon, not by virute of reaction but because of the seemingly innate lack of a sense of humor or irony on the part of many of those who call themselves conservatives.)
By the way, I admit that I find Colbert’s jibe here not terribly funny either because I have a suspicion that he, like so many other high profile media personalities (and other non-musician intellectuals for that matter), knows next to nothing about art music, past, present or future — though I’d love to be proved wrong about that.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 11:28 PM ¶But Lisa, I thought you were banging your head against the piano????
Posted 01 May 2009 at 10:50 AM ¶Colbert interviewed Alex Ross on his show. He\’s clearly satirizing a distaste for Reich, just as he did a year (or two?) ago with John Zorn.
Posted 02 May 2009 at 6:41 PM ¶Post a Comment